Diary

April 2013RSS feed

Lambing over for 2013

Monday 15 April, 2013

by Rosemary at 5:00pm in Sheep 4 comments Comments closed

Well, that’s lambing over for another year. We didn’t see the vet at all this year, which is good. We had a C section and two other visits last year. :-(

We put eight ewes and three gimmers to the tup; of the 11, nine scanned in lamb with six sets of twins and three singles.

And we have fifteen live lambs and nine live ewes, which is a pretty good result. One of the two empty ewes has gone to a pet home – she was the one that had the C section last year – and the other one will get another chance with the tup this autumn. She is currently taking on “auntie” duties.

Helping the grass grow

Wednesday 17 April, 2013

by Rosemary at 10:22am in Grassland management 4 comments Comments closed

I think I have said before that managing grass causes me more headaches than any other part of smallholding. All I can say is “nothing’s changed”.

Last year (2012) was pretty awful for our grazing. Grass doesn’t really appreciate being under water – and some of ours was for a good part of the year. Although our soil is mostly loamy sand and sandy loam, we are close to sea level and the water table is quite high. Coupled with the fact that some of our neighbours aren’t terribly assiduous are ditch clearing, we had a lot of standing water for much of the year.

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